Yezbick.com: If It's Weird, Flip It Over and Check, It Might Be a Yezbick

So with the help of pops, we finally managed to finish the floor.I can still feel it in my lower back and in one funky spot on my ribs.

I’ve checked out a few books from the brary on kitchens — currently getting quite a few ideas from the aptly titled 1001 Ideas for Kitchen Organization.

I imagine this will be more of a process than a back breaking endeavor. A few areas I’ve marked for improvement: herb window garden, knife rack, hooks for hanging mugs, wine rack, stemware hanger – each turn of the page seems to offer something new to think about. One thing I’m definitely going to need is a kitchen cart:

I’ll keep ya posted.

The Ann Arbor District Library’s redesign of their website is receiving a lot of attention, and rightly so. Giving AADL.org a very quick onceover, I am extremely jealous. Compare it with my local library’s background image – and you can get a hint of why. My immediate response to good design is always a desire to rip up my CSS and start anew here – and believe me — that urge has been dropkicked into my chest.

AADL is chock full o’ bloggily goodness. The conversational aspects of a weblog, providing feedback and gathering input from its readers are alive and well at AADL. Shifty provides the insight of why this format is working so well for them — and how they are employing it correctly:

The AADL blogs do it all right. The posts are written in the first person and in a conversational tone, with the author’s first name to help stress the people in the library. The staff isn’t afraid to note problems with the new catalog, the web site, or anything else. Full transparency – nice. You can feel the level of trust building online. They respond to every comment that needs it, whether it’s a criticism, question, or suggestion.

She then goes on to list examples of the comment feedback — and then makes a follow up post after hearing from the AADL’s tech guru – Eli Neiburger.

One aspect that can’t be overlooked is AADL’s utilization of RSS throughout the site. Powerful for disseminating information, fun for play. Take a look at how patron Edward Vielmetti is harnessing the power of the library feeds in the right-hand column of his blog.

Elsewhere:
mousemusings: Slick New Ann Arbor District Library Website
Librarian in Black: Blogger asks for RSS @ Library…and gets it
lbr: AADL’s new website unveiled to rave reviews

No it won’t always look like this. But it will be kinda screwed up around here for the next coupla weeks. So much is so much…you know?

I know – pretty deep, right?
Duuuude, you’re like, freakin’ me out.

It’s starting to look like spring around here. Rounded corners ala The CSS Rounded Box Generator. It validates – but the php culling in the radio feed isn’t really playing nice with it. May have to cut out the recently played while leaving a link to the jukebox…

Oh. And that Internet Explorer scroll bug is back.
The individual entries aren’t looking so hot either…and you can’t even see the archives page…

Yay. Good thing I don’t get paid to do this.

may have to throw up one of those classic under construction pages

Puppy : Rug :: Kevin : Internet

Got bored with it…
Liked what I’d done so far over here…
Thought I’d bring it over here.
There’s a few more thingies on this end though – so it may not be fluid until tomorrowish.

Experimenting with Dynamic Text Replacement…Still ironing it out…

And abandoning…IE was giving me some funky graphics for one word titles, and I was getting a little edgy about load times/bandwith…still gonna mess around with the fonts…

Yeah yeah…there’s a jumbled mess on the right side of the page (or at least there was until I scrapped a bunch of it). I realized while I was in the shower this morning that the stylesheets are pulling some algebraic equations on me…See – the dealy-o is that everything on the right side is in box X – and I’m trying to get another page (W) containing elements Y and Z imported into X. Unfortunately — I hadn’t realized that the styles of Y and Z are directly effected by the styles of X – which up till now have been the same as W. So that — if Y and Z are dictated to be 50% on W, when they are imported to X – they are further delineated by 50% – thus resulting in 25% – and one messed up browser window. I know I know! Way too exciting!

Also — My server contacted me today telling me I’ve gone over my 1 GB/month transfer rate…the result of a brief 20 minute lapse of judgement in which I pointed the way towards “THE” video on another site on the sideblog…That 20 minute lapse caused a mad rush of 16,000 people scrambling onto my site — about 6,000 more than I usually get in a month – over the course of two days…Thankfully things are quickly getting back to normal – yesterday traffic was up only about two times the norm. Twenty minutes…Stupid.

Anyhow — I doubt I’m gonna be able to do anything about this mess in the next few days…In fact – I’m probably not gonna be doing anything in the next few days…Tomorrow I drive back to Georgia. Monday I ride out to a lakehouse retreat. Tuesday disappears. Wednesday I ride back. Thursday I have an interview. Friday, I’m in love.

Must. Make. Tab. Key. Relevant.

5:15 Suckerfish totally not happening…abandoning.

Working on those suckerfish dropdown menus today. You should know that the backend pages haven’t been restyled yet — so if you plan on clicking any of those links — don’t be shocked by the nasty nasty.

Speaking of nasty – I mailed my Uncle George his earnings from the political wager we had concerning Dean today. Don’t spend it all in one place, Unka.